Tag: App Design

Unclouded by Christian Göllner, an app that helps to analyse and clean your cloud storage (Dropbox and Google Drive, for now) has just recently out of beta, and I have the honor to work together with Christian on the design for this app. I was really impressed by the app quality when I first received the early build of the app – without hesitation, I told him that I wanted to work together to bring this app to the level of awesomeness. It is super amazing that the app has been featured by Android Police, TechCrunch, CNET, Lifehacker, and xda-developers, and these boosted our confidence about the design and development direction of the app.

In this post, I would love to talk about some design details that we have worked hard to fine tune in order to craft the ‘Unclouded’ experience that we have visioned.

The famous Mailbox app in iOS has finally arrived for Android users, and again it’s a very disappointing move from a company under Dropbox. It’s fine (actually not) to have the Android platform as the second thought of your app/services, but why some of these companies doesn’t just show some Android love by making things familiar and easy for Android users?

I am sure I will hear ‘Taylor, it’s about consistency. Our PdM requested to make it looks all the same across platform, so people gets familiar instantly! And it also provide consistency in the branding and marketing!’. My ass.

My Redesign Suggestions

Go consistent with Android UI patterns and building blocks. You can keep some of the unique elements while not breaking the Android Design Guideline.

The user of navigation drawer indicator (change color depending on the page)

Use the tab style in Android

DON’T block the notification bar by your syncing/refresh/whatever you call bar. Just use crouton to display the progress in-app.

May be use path-tracing for the loading indicator?

The color of the elements can be consistent to the different screens, so it keep that uniqueness in mailbox.

Why control the user behavior? So now I can’t write a draft when I have some free time? Why the force of deletion?

Being a mailbox app that encourages users to organize their mails in different categories (read, dismiss, list, later), I find it really strange to place those actions on the top. Once you finish reading the mail (most of the time), you focus will be at the bottom part of the screen, and it’s way easier and natural for the user to reach the buttons at the bottom for organizing the mail.

Since they have hacked around to make certain things work differently from what Android has to offer (like the notification bar on top of your notification bar), why not spend a little bit more time to polish it up for Android users?

It’s been a long time since my last blog entry, but definitely I am still working on tons of Android Design (in private) and they are often very inspiring, which I hope I can share them in the near future if it’s possible.

Today I would just like to share some redesigns for an app that is local to my home country. The app called Yes Life, which basically an app that allows the user to call and send SMS to any local number from anywhere around the world with internet connection. Below are some screens from the current app:

I hope this gives some idea on the importance of the app design in branding enhancement. If you have excellent solutions and branding, but decided to give your user bad products, it doesn’t do good on anything except getting rejected by the users.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Bloomberg – another app that I wanted to redesign so long, because the app is pretty badly designed ever since day one. It is almost an exact port of the iOS version, with a really strange ‘MENU’ button at the bottom of the app, and the deadly legacy menu button. Below show some shots from the current version for comparison:

So what if the app is redesigned with the Holo UI approaches and full Android experience? Below are some shots that I have redesigned:

And also some redesigns for tablet version:

What do you think? Do you like the redesigns? Don’t hesitate to shot in the comment box!

LinkedIn app is one of the app that I wanted to redesign so badly that I hate it when I am using it (only for accepting request and replying message). It might looks good 2-3 years back, but not anymore today.

There are a few reasons that I think this app deserve a complete redesign:

Using the Holo UI approaches, I have redesigned a few screens that fit nicely in today’s Android devices. I have replaced the dashboard UI with the Sliding Menu due to the huge number of sections available in the app. Check them out below:

Update 28/12/2012: After taking some feedback from my G+ post, I have decided to give it another revision for better LinkedIn branding, and below are some updated shots. What’s changed:

Action Bar is in dark grey color to give a distinct UI layers

Added frame for photos

Used Card UI for details

Added some iconography

Increase the size of the sliding menu and smaller icons

Added Share button besides Invite to Connect button

What do you think about my redesign? Do you like them? Shot me your comments or suggestions!

Last month Roman Nurik posted a wizards pattern for complex user inputs, and I have now used it for my redesign of a local (Malaysia) movie ticketing app, which is definitely a perfect match (I think). Hopefully this redesign can inspire any developers or designers that are looking to create/redesign movie ticketing app.

Why I am redesigning this app? I have placed a few shots below to briefly show the user interface of the app to explain that. Completely implemented with iOS look and feel, legacy menu button, badly-resized images, in-app advertisement (about themselves), bad user interaction design – everything is so wrong. Give it a try if you want to understand my frustrations.

Completely redesigned with Holo UI approach, the movie ticketing app is aimed to provide great and easy ticketing service with sufficient information about cinemas and movies. Here’s my take (It’s a long page!):

What do you think about my redesign? Shot me in the comments if you have any suggestions/feedback/critique!

Last week I have published a redesign of outlook.com app after the disappointing official release, and since then I have also started to look into the tablet version. The redesigned phone version has been a shared around Android Google+ community during that day, and it was also mentioned in latest episode of Android Design in Action – big thanks to everyone who re-shared and commented on the redesign.

Below are my take on the tablet version, probably not much surprise for some (Before anyone say it, yes, it looks like Gmail/Email app, since it’s an Email client):